That really puts the seal on any hopes of a Nixon rehabilitation, doesn't it? They say he was a great president, especially on foreign policy, and if he wasn't a paranoid and petty man then that's how history would remember him, as great. Well, I fear history is about to get a lot more harsh on Nixon.

Back then, "because COMMUNISM" was the mantra for all politicians, the way "because TERROR" is today. Kennedy ran on hysterical anti-Communist paranoia. Nixon was vile in many ways, but not the only one to gladly use war for cheap political gain.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared. The Paris peace talks may have ended years earlier, if it had not been for Nixon's subterfuge.

Chennault was dispatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.

So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out.

He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to "just hang on through election".

Johnson was told by Defence Secretary Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace.

Nixon went on to become president and eventually signed a Vietnam peace deal in 1973In a series of remarkable White House recordings we can hear Johnson's reaction to the news.In one call to Senator Richard Russell he says: "We have found that our friend, the Republican nominee, our California friend, has been playing on the outskirts with our enemies and our friends both, he has been doing it through rather subterranean sources. Mrs Chennault is warning the South Vietnamese not to get pulled into this Johnson move."

He orders the Nixon campaign to be placed under FBI surveillance and demands to know if Nixon is personally involved.

When he became convinced it was being orchestrated by the Republican candidate, the president called Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader in the Senate to get a message to Nixon.The president knew what was going on, Nixon should back off and the subterfuge amounted to treason.Publicly Nixon was suggesting he had no idea why the South Vietnamese withdrew from the talks. He even offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.

Johnson felt it was the ultimate expression of political hypocrisy but in calls recorded with Clifford they express the fear that going public would require revealing the FBI were bugging the ambassador's phone and the National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting his communications with Saigon.

So they decided to say nothing.

The president did let Humphrey know and gave him enough information to sink his opponent. But by then, a few days from the election, Humphrey had been told he had closed the gap with Nixon and would win the presidency. So Humphrey decided it would be too disruptive to the country to accuse the Republicans of treason, if the Democrats were going to win anyway.

Nixon ended his campaign by suggesting the administration war policy was in shambles. They couldn't even get the South Vietnamese to the negotiating table.

He won by less than 1% of the popular vote.

Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968.

The White House tapes, combined with Wheeler's interviews with key White House personnel, provide an unprecedented insight into how Johnson handled a series of crises that rocked his presidency. Sadly, we will never have that sort of insight again.

MFAWG:RyogaM: If you refuse to read the article, at least read the above before trying to be a Nixon apologist.

Do you recall Humphrey's official position on Vietnam? This shiat doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Actually, I don't, but the article mentions that Johnson was taped saying the he felt Humphrey was too soft. Are you suggesting that Johnson allowed Nixon's treasonous interference in the Peace conference to go unremarked because he wanted Nixon to win and not Humphrey?

RyogaM:MFAWG: RyogaM: If you refuse to read the article, at least read the above before trying to be a Nixon apologist.

Do you recall Humphrey's official position on Vietnam? This shiat doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Actually, I don't, but the article mentions that Johnson was taped saying the he felt Humphrey was too soft. Are you suggesting that Johnson allowed Nixon's treasonous interference in the Peace conference to go unremarked because he wanted Nixon to win and not Humphrey?

I'm suggesting that it was pretty obvious to the South Vietnamese that they were going to get a better deal under Nixon than Humphrey. Nobody had to tell them that.

Animatronik:This story is not new, it gets pulled out every 10 or 15 years. No doubt Nixon was an ass, but I doubt the talks in Nov. 1968 would have ended the war.

The talks may not have ended the Vietnam War. But they might have, and we'll never know, because private citizen Richard M. Nixon, without any official standing in the US Government, used back channels to secretly undermine official peace talks of the US Government.

It's documented. And sure, it came out into public discourse every decade or so, as a rumor. The reason it's news now, though, is that the actual documents that confirm this rumor are now public.

So if this conspiracy is true, that means they're all true, right? Moonlanding, second gunman, tower 7, Roswell, Clinton body count, New World Order, the Fed, electric car, Illuminati, AIDS, crack cocaine, MK Ultra, Philadelphia Experiment, chemtrails, numbers stations, Dick Clark, bigfoot, HAARP, fluoride, the Trilateral Commission and the reverse vampires all framed Nixon with these tapes. Watergate was the distraction to let the IMF get away with their jew gold.

X-boxershorts:Animatronik: This story is not new, it gets pulled out every 10 or 15 years. No doubt Nixon was an ass, but I doubt the talks in Nov. 1968 would have ended the war.

The talks may not have ended the Vietnam War. But they might have, and we'll never know, because private citizen Richard M. Nixon, without any official standing in the US Government, used back channels to secretly undermine official peace talks of the US Government.

It's documented. And sure, it came out into public discourse every decade or so, as a rumor. The reason it's news now, though, is that the actual documents that confirm this rumor are now public.

Richard M. Nixon committed treason for personal gain.

So a Presidential candidate shouldn't inform our surrogate states what they're going to do if elected?

MFAWG:RyogaM: MFAWG: RyogaM: If you refuse to read the article, at least read the above before trying to be a Nixon apologist.

Do you recall Humphrey's official position on Vietnam? This shiat doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Actually, I don't, but the article mentions that Johnson was taped saying the he felt Humphrey was too soft. Are you suggesting that Johnson allowed Nixon's treasonous interference in the Peace conference to go unremarked because he wanted Nixon to win and not Humphrey?

I'm suggesting that it was pretty obvious to the South Vietnamese that they were going to get a better deal under Nixon than Humphrey. Nobody had to tell them that.

It doesn't matter what the Vietnamese thought. This is about Nixon's behavior.

Simple question: was sending a back channel, secret envoy to the Vietnamese telling them to pull out of Peace talks with the govt. and wait for Nixon treason or not?

MFAWG:X-boxershorts: MFAWG: So a Presidential candidate shouldn't inform our surrogate states what they're going to do if elected?

In public, for all eyes and ears, as a stated policy position, yes.

But, this is not at all what Nixon did.

In your own words, tell me what he did? Because that's all I see here.

Read the article. Listen to the white house tape recordings. Do not fear knowledge that might shake your perceptions.

Private citizen Nixon carried on secret talks with the South Vietnamese government that persuaded that government to withdraw from peace talkswith North Vietnam that were brokered by the US Government and was the official policy of the US Government. This is legally defined as treason.

RyogaM:MFAWG: RyogaM: MFAWG: RyogaM: If you refuse to read the article, at least read the above before trying to be a Nixon apologist.

Do you recall Humphrey's official position on Vietnam? This shiat doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Actually, I don't, but the article mentions that Johnson was taped saying the he felt Humphrey was too soft. Are you suggesting that Johnson allowed Nixon's treasonous interference in the Peace conference to go unremarked because he wanted Nixon to win and not Humphrey?

I'm suggesting that it was pretty obvious to the South Vietnamese that they were going to get a better deal under Nixon than Humphrey. Nobody had to tell them that.

It doesn't matter what the Vietnamese thought. This is about Nixon's behavior.

Simple question: was sending a back channel, secret envoy to the Vietnamese telling them to pull out of Peace talks with the govt. and wait for Nixon treason or not?

It absolutely matters what the South Vietnamese thought. If the South Vietnamese thought they were going to get a few more billion dollars in military aid from Nixon and were pretty sure that they weren't going to get it from Humphrey it doesn't really matter what Mrs. Chennault told some third tier cocktail party connection she had,

And it was pretty clear at the time that Nixon was going to retain the hard line, and Humphrey had come around to an antiwar position after the contentious 1968 Democratic Convention.

MFAWG:X-boxershorts: MFAWG: So a Presidential candidate shouldn't inform our surrogate states what they're going to do if elected?

In public, for all eyes and ears, as a stated policy position, yes.

But, this is not at all what Nixon did.

In your own words, tell me what he did? Because that's all I see here.

In public in 1968, Nixon was saying he could not discuss his Vietnamese position in order to not disrupt the Peace talks. Behind the scenes, he was sending secret envoys telling the Vietnamese not to attend the talks and wait to get a better deal. You appear to be arguing just to argue.

X-boxershorts:MFAWG: X-boxershorts: MFAWG: So a Presidential candidate shouldn't inform our surrogate states what they're going to do if elected?

In public, for all eyes and ears, as a stated policy position, yes.

But, this is not at all what Nixon did.

In your own words, tell me what he did? Because that's all I see here.

Read the article. Listen to the white house tape recordings. Do not fear knowledge that might shake your perceptions.

Private citizen Nixon carried on secret talks with the South Vietnamese government that persuaded that government to withdraw from peace talkswith North Vietnam that were brokered by the US Government and was the official policy of the US Government. This is legally defined as treason.

RyogaM:MFAWG: X-boxershorts: MFAWG: So a Presidential candidate shouldn't inform our surrogate states what they're going to do if elected?

In public, for all eyes and ears, as a stated policy position, yes.

But, this is not at all what Nixon did.

In your own words, tell me what he did? Because that's all I see here.

In public in 1968, Nixon was saying he could not discuss his Vietnamese position in order to not disrupt the Peace talks. Behind the scenes, he was sending secret envoys telling the Vietnamese not to attend the talks and wait to get a better deal. You appear to be arguing just to argue.

Oh, FFS. Nixon's ENTIRE POLITICAL CAREER was built on a hard line towards communist global expansion.